


Curious Transformations

by CharlotteCordelier



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:19:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14161659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharlotteCordelier/pseuds/CharlotteCordelier
Summary: From the Department of I-didn't-think-this-all-the-way-through, a season 2 AU. Felicity comes to in a train station, missing some time. And that's only the beginning of the weirdness.





	1. Black-In

_ I may remark that the curious transformations many formulae can undergo, the unsuspected and to a beginner apparently impossible identity of forms exceedingly dissimilar at first sight, is I think one of the chief difficulties in the early part of mathematical studies. I am often reminded of certain sprites and fairies one reads of, who are at one's elbows in one shape now, and the next minute in a form most dissimilar. _

-Ada Lovelace

  
  


_ My feet are bare. I have no shoes on. My feet are cold. This is not a clean floor. I am cold, too. _

Felicity brought her arms up and hugged herself. Her arms were as bare as her feet and her hands were freezing. She was outside. Looking up and around, she tried to gather herself. Dirty concrete under her toes. Crowds of people, brushing past her in a rush hour hurry, threatening her toes. The noises of big machines. That feeling in the air that a cold rain was about to turn to sleet. A PA system. A PA system!

“...departing Coast City...boarding process has begun…

Her feet turned in a slow circle. Starling Central Station. She looked down. It was one of her favorite dresses to travel in: stretchy knit houndstooth with a patent belt. She should have been wearing a cardigan with it, at the very least. The kicky, a-line skirt was dirty over her thighs, like she’d been wiping her hands on it.  _ What the hell? _

No one would meet her eyes. She probably looked pretty questionable. She definitely didn’t need to know what her hair was doing.  _ Focus _ . There was one person here who would have to talk to her--that lady at the information desk, the one with the gray rolled curls and feathering lipstick. Felicity made her way over to her: Maeve, according to her nametag.  _ Maeve will answer my questions _ .

“Hello, Maeve,” Felicity said as brightly as she could. “This is going to sound like a strange question. But have I been here long?”

“Oh dear,” said Maeve. Her fingers worried the cuffs of her polyester blouse. “Just about all day, I should think.”

“All day.” Felicity exhaled very slowly, feeling suddenly light-headed.

“I think you may have been here last night, too,” Maeve admitted. “You were standing right there when I got here for my shift.”

“Okay.” There was a tinny, buzzing noise in her ears.

“Do you need to sit down, dear?”

“I think so.”

Maeve came out from behind her little desk and led Felicity behind it, helping her into a spare folding chair, and patting her shoulder.

“Thank you.”

“Of course, dear. You know my nephew had a little turn just like this. When you get clean, you’ll be able to look back on this as your rock bottom.”

Felicity realized with some horror, she meant junkie clean, and opened her mouth to deny it. Then she closed her mouth. She had no idea where she’d been for...oh shit. She’d been at the Queens’ party at the mansion. She had a vague memory of Oliver pissing her off. And then?

“Maeve, can I make a phone call?”

“No, I’m afraid that’s against the rules.”

“Oh.” It was like a body blow. “Could you make a phone call for me?”  _ Please say yes. Please say yes. _

“Oh, angel, certainly!” Maeve dialed. “Hello? Yes, this is Maeve, and I work down at the train station, the Starling train station. Yes, there’s a young lady here. Oh--I forgot to ask. Dear, what is your name?”

“Felicity Megan Smoak.”

“Her name is Felicity Megan Smoak. Well, there’s no need for that sort of language. Young man? You might want to bring her a coat and some shoes. No, she doesn’t have any. I don’t know, I’ll ask. Do you want to talk to him?”

Felicity hugged her arms into herself tight and shook her head, suddenly feeling dirty and shamed and a little miserable.  _ What is wrong with me? _

“You’re very welcome,” Maeve said, and hung up. Then she leaned across and patted Felicity’s bare knee. “It’s alright dear.” Her voice quavered a little. “Your friend is on his way.”

“Is he mad?”

“Oh, no, angel.” Maeve resumed patting. “Relieved, I think. You know how men are.”

“Not really.”

The wait felt like an eternity. Felicity realized she was desperately thirsty, but was too embarrassed of her own neediness to ask for a drink. She folded in on herself with anxiety, crossing and uncrossing her grimy ankles and chafing her upper arms with her dirty hands. 

“Oh thank goodness. I thought you’d never come,” Maeve said, sounding genuinely distressed. “She’s just been sitting there like…”

“Ma’am,” Diggle said.

“John?” Felicity looked up, her voice shaking.

“Come here girl,” he said, holding his arms out. Felicity stood, but before she could move, Maeve’s restraining hand was on her arm. 

“He’s not some sort of protector…?”

“Protector?”

“She means pimp,” John supplied helpfully, looking bemused. He could have snapped the old woman in half, of course, but was instead waiting patiently for the scenario to play itself out.

“What?” Felicity looked at Maeve, who was almost crimson. “Oh, no, Maeve. More of a big brother from another mother thing.”

“A what?”

“I’m fine. He’s fine. Thank you for calling him.”

John, having passed apparent muster, immediately draped her in a fleece full zip that smelled like his aftershave. Then, shocking Felicity thoroughly, he dropped to his knees and helped her slip on what felt like some kid of house shoe, but turned out to be fur-lined moccasins. Almost immediately, she felt better.

“Thank you, Maeve,” John said.

“She’s still worried about me,” Felicity murmured. “Give her your number.”

“She has my number.”

“Give her your card,” she insisted.

“Ma’am.” John offered it with a flourish to Maeve, who accepted and tucked it into the pocket of her skirt. “Any time. Night or day.”

Then he picked her up like the officer and the gentleman that he was and whisked her away to the back of an unmarked black Suburban with tinted out windows. Not an ARGUS vehicle, but almost. He deposited her on the back seat, sat immediately in the driver’s side, and peeled away from the train station like they were being followed.

“Are we being followed?” she twisted around in the seat, looking behind them.

“I don’t know. There’s gatorade and saltines on the back seat. You need the calories.”

“You’re panicking. Why are you panicking?”

“I’m not panicking.”

“I’ve been helping you in the field for like a year now, including the Russia stuff. I can tell when you’re panicking.”

“I am only...concerned, because I lack operational scope.”

“You what?”

“Drink. Eat. We’re on our way to your place, but it’s going to be forty-five minutes in traffic. If you keel over when we get there, I’m taking you to the hospital. What do you remember?”   


“I remember the party at the Queen’s House. I remember...I think Oliver was being a dick. And then I’m here. At the train station.”

“Eat,” he ordered. “Drink.”

Gatorade and saltines tasted like ambrosia. Felicity finished a bottle and a half a sleeve and looked around for more.

“Wait ten minutes,” John said without looking. “If you can keep it down, I’ll consider seconds.”

“Where’s Oliver?”   


“He’s waiting at your place.” His hands tightened on the wheel.

Digg was totally panicking. Still, her stomach felt uncomfortably tight, like seder tight, but under her hand it was hollow. When was the last time she’d eaten? Or even drunk for that matter? As her blood sugar rose, so did her processing speed.  _ What do you remember? Oliver was a dick. I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to be alone. The mansion, crushing inadequacy, and...then a train station.  _ Her hands and feet prickled uncomfortably as the temperature in the car rose. She didn’t trust her stomach, so she didn’t ask for more. As they approached her building’s secured garage, John pulled out a clicker from the glovebox and used it to open the door.

“Do I want to know?” she asked.

John raised an eyebrow in the rear view mirror.

“Yeah, probably not.” She sighed, and tried to make herself presentable, hiding her hands in the pockets of the fleece. John helped her out of the car and they made their way into the hallway and towards her elevator. She didn’t miss the way he followed a half a step behind, opening doors and pushing buttons for her. He was handling her like he would a client. 

When he opened the door to her apartment, the familiar rush home smells came at her: the environmentally safe laundry detergent, the working radiator, the clementine dish soap in her kitchen. Someone had been doing her dishes? John shut the door behind them and Oliver sprang out of the kitchen. He looked even less-shaven than usual.

“Felicity.” He stepped forward and put his still-damp hands on her shoulders. “Are you okay?” Oliver’s voice was room-temperature, but the words were...pressed somehow. He was scanning her up and down.

“I’m fine,” she said automatically.

“You don’t look fine. Where is your coat? And your shoes?” 

“I’m fine,” she repeated, dodging the question. “I’m going to make some coffee.”

“Oliver will make the coffee,” Digg announced. “Right, Oliver?”

Felicity watched them glare daggers at each other while Digg steered her towards and then onto the sofa. There was a whole alpha male conversation happening here that she wasn’t privy to. But it was definitely about her.

“Right,” Oliver grunted. Then he disappeared into her kitchen, making a series of noises that gave her real concern.

Immediately, Digg sat beside her, produced a series of small tools and envelopes, took her hand, and began to take fingernail scrapings.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, too stunned to try and take her hand back.

“My job,” he said quietly. “Don’t shower until Lyla gets here.”

“Lyla?” she squeaked. This whole day, from the moment she...blacked in or whatever, was just flying at her at warp speed, while she moved in slow motion.

John continued working in silence, scraping each fingernail on its underside and then swabbing it with something damp. Everything went into little baggies or envelopes. There was a crash in her small galley kitchen, and an oath in a language she didn’t understand.

“I will let you do this,” Felicity said, “if you promise to go in there and make sure he actually knows how to make coffee.”

“Deal,” John said, smiling for just a moment. He finished, tucked everything away in some inside pocket of his sportcoat, and stepped into the kitchen. Oliver was ejected a moment later.

“I broke a mug,” Oliver said mulishly, and began pacing.

“My MIT mug?”

“I don’t think so.”

“My Grace Hopper mug? Notorious RBG? Male Tears?”

“How many mugs do you have?” he asked, pausing for a moment, the corner of his mouth turning up.

“It’s not a crime to like mugs.”

“It was,” John announced as he entered with a small tray, “the one that said: Valar Morghulis - Yes All Men.”

“Damn,” Felicity said. The tray set in front of her had a mug of very creamy coffee and a sleeve of Nilla wafers. “I can’t remember where I got that one.

“Drink,” Diggle said. “Eat.”

Felicity did, nibbling a wafer and then gulping the coffee, which was really excellent.

“So,” John said carefully. “Can you tell us where you’ve been?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, but it’s fine. I’m fine” It just kind of fell out of her mouth. “The last thing I remember is the party at your house. Then...nothing until an hour ago. I think there were trains. But I’m fine now.” She crammed two wafers into her mouth. Harder to answer questions that way.

“Jesus Christ, John.” Oliver resumed pacing through her living room, like he was determined to tear through the flooring. Now both the boys were panicking?

“Look, I really need a shower and a nap. So maybe you guys could just get back to work and I’ll catch up in an hour or so?” She couldn’t pretend like her voice hadn’t just cracked.

Oliver dropped onto the sofa beside her, as through a trap door. He put his head in his hands. John took a knee directly in front of her and met her eyes.

“You’re missing some time,” he said gently.

“Missing some time?”

“The party at the Queens’ was about seventy-two hours ago.”

“Seventy-- Three days?” Felicity squeaked. “I’ve missing three days?” She jumped to her feet, but found that her knees were uncooperative. Oliver quickly stood up beside her and now put an arm around her waist to help her back down.

“You didn’t know?” he asked.

“Of course I didn’t know! Do I look like I know?” She gestured at herself, her state. “Say what you will about my social skills, Oliver, but I do not dress like this in public. Or private!”

“I know that!” he snapped back.

“Okay, everybody, take a breath,” John said. “Felicity, Lyla’s on her way over. She’ll help you get cleaned up, maybe run an IV, and then sit with you while you sleep.”

“You invited your wife to babysit me?” Warp. Speed. 

“No,” John said firmly, “I invited my ex-wife, a credentialed and fully armed ARGUS agent to watch your back until close of business so that Oliver will agree to go back to the office and finish the day’s work.”

“Oh no--Isabel.” If she was never struck by some horrifying realization again, it would be too soon. They were flying at her like wild pitches and she kept getting beaned. “Where does she think I am?”

“I told her you got salmonella from the work cafeteria,” Oliver said. “It was John’s idea.”

“Smart,” she said. “I never liked their food anyway.”

There was a knock at the front door. Felicity tried to stand up, but Oliver put his arm out, pinning her back against the sofa. He rose and stood in front of her as John moved to the door, standing beside the frame. 

“It’s me, Johnny,” Lyla said from outside. “The building’s clear.”

Only then did the men stand down. Oliver returned to his seat and John opened the door for Lyla. She was wearing jeans and a cable knit sweater, baggy enough to accommodate a holster or two, and a well-traveled duffle bag.

“Hi, Johnny, Oliver, Felicity,” Lyla said warmly, like she’d just come over for drinks after work. She crossed into the room and took a loose-limbed seat on the ottoman across the room. Already, the tension was ratcheting down. “Hanging in there?”

“Yeah.” Felicity could feel the tension in her shoulders ease slightly. Thank G-d for Lyla.

“Okay, then. We’re good here,” Lyla addressed the boys. “You need to get back before anyone raises more questions.”

“Felicity,” Oliver turned to her. “We don’t have to go. If you want us to, we can stay.” The fear was practically rolling off of him. Fear that she’d disappear again, probably.

“Lyla’s here,” she said quietly. “I’m okay. Come back after work. I’ll be a little more...put together.”

“You’re sure?” he prodded.

“She’s sure, man,” John said. “We gotta go.”

Sighing, Oliver stood, straightening his tie. He looked very, very tired. Almost as tired as Felicity felt. Lyla stood up and ushered the boys out the front door. She locked and bolted it behind them, then turned back to her charge on the sofa.

“You look like you could use some IV rehydration and a shower,” she commented. “No offense.”

“John told me not to do the shower. Not until you got here.” Felicity swallowed. “Does he think I need rape kit?”

“If I knew what he was thinking,” Lyla said mildly, “he might still be my husband. Do you think you need a rape kit?”

“I don’t remember enough to know if I do.” Felicity stared at her hands. “I got roofied once, in college. I lost like half a night. I woke up at the foot of my roommate’s bed, curled up like a cat. They said I looked drunker than usual, so they made sure they got me home okay. I puked for like thirty-six hours, but it could have been much worse.”

“Does this time feel like that time?” 

“No.” Felicity could see why Lyla was so good at what she did. She didn’t ruffle.  “This feels like...like somebody just pulled a bag off my head and all of a sudden I’m not where I was when the bag went on.”

“Okay. Have you been experiencing any unusual forgetfulness, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, that kind of thing?”

Felicity couldn’t help it; she laughed. “Sorry, it’s just...I have two jobs, one of them is secret, and I spend my days researching either the best lunch spots for corporate bigwigs or the who’s who of SCPD Most Wanted. I have plenty of strange thoughts and bad dreams.”

“But not the kind I’m talking about, I think.”

“No.” She twisted her hands together.

“Felicity. They don’t talk a lot about it, in western medicine, but bodies have thoughts and memories, too. Athletic muscle memory, gray matter in fingertips, the hairs that stand up on the back of your neck. I want you to close your eyes and don’t think about it. But just see if you think you need the kit. I’ll be right here, the whole time.”

“What if I do?” What if she did. What if she remembered. Then? “What--”

“Then you and I will handle it. And the boys won’t ever know anything that you don’t want them to. Okay?”

“Okay.” Felicity took a shaky breath and closed her eyes.  _ Hello, body. How are you? It’s me, Felicity. Do you remember anything about the last three days of our life? _ At first, she was just a woman staring at the inside of her eyelids. But then she felt her feet inside their borrowed moccasins. They’d been bare a lot. They were sore. But they hadn’t walked far. Her hands were cold and they were going to stay cold for a while, she could tell. Her back hurt, like she’d been doing too much standing still or sitting still or both. Her stomach was a little dodgy. But nothing felt...injured.

“What do you think?” Lyla asked serenely. If Felicity had been on the Titanic, she would have wanted Lyla in her lifeboat. No, she would have wanted Lyla at the helm.

“I don’t need the kit,” 

“Okay. Shower?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Lyla didn’t pry, but she did give Felicity a big paper bag to put all her dirty clothes in. She warned her to sit down in the shower, in case she got light-headed, and asked her to keep the bathroom door unlocked. Felicity was prepared to give up her first born in order to bathe, so this was an easy sell.

The shower was exquisite and bizarre. On the one hand, cleanliness. On the other hand…  _ Hello, belly button. Do you remember where we’ve been? _ To avoid thinking about the implications of turning into a person who talked to her navel, she put all her energy into scrubbing, lathering, rinsing, shaving, and conditioning. And then, sweet bliss: the brushing of the teeth. In clean heart pajamas and socks, she stepped out feeling like a new woman.

“Better?”

“You have no idea.” The warmth of the water and her apartment, compared to wherever she’d been, was lulling. She felt like she’d been pulling all nighters, half-sitting in library carrels.

“You look like you’re ready to crash. Want to climb into bed and I’ll start the IV?” 

“No, not bed.” It was off-putting, after you blacked back in missing three days, to feel like you were going to sleep again.

“Sofa, then?”

“Sure.” Sleeping on the sofa during the day was technically a nap, though, so Felicity could talk herself into that. Somewhat dazed, she watched Lyla make up the sofa. She sat when she was told so Lyla could start an IV. Felicity didn’t even care what was in it, as long as it meant she could lie down. It felt cold, trickling in through her hand. Lyla pulled a fuzzy throw blanket over her.

“Do you want the TV on?”

“HGTV,” Felicity murmured. "Or Say Yes to the Dress."

“Got it. Sleep, Felicity. You’ll want your wits about you when the boys get home from work.”


	2. Gone Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity's life takes a further turn for the weird and no one is handling it particularly well...

Felicity dreamed about a bazaar. It was in an arid, warm place with narrow side streets and mud walls. The air was dusty and smelled like food she’d never eaten. She walked, aware that she was carrying a heavy load, and a rifle. But it wasn’t difficult. She was taller and stronger and walked very upright. Everything was ancient and unfamiliar and comfortable. Behind her was a sound, footsteps on concrete stairs, two men, hurrying and steady.

She sat upright on the sofa, sucking in air.

“It’s okay,” Lyla said, rising to her feet from the ottoman. “You’re okay.”

“They’re coming,” Felicity said, putting a hand over her racing heart. She was freezing, outside the warmth of the dream.

“Who’s coming?” The gun was already in her hands.

“The boys.” Felicity pushed herself to a seated position, wrapping the chunky chenille throw around herself tightly. “I heard them on the stairs.”

Lyla gave her a strange look, holding the Glock easily in her hands as someone knocked on the door. It was, as Felicity predicted, the boys. They looked a little worn, but somewhat less frantic than they had. And, bless them, they were carrying takeout from her favorite Italian place. Oliver hung back, hands in the pockets of his Italian suit. He leaned against the wall like it was the only thing holding him up.

“We come bearing minestrone,” Diggle said with a smile. “Among other things.”

“I could eat some minestrone,” Felicity said, smiling back.

“Risotto?” Lyla asked hopefully.

“You know it.” John and Lyla slipped into the kitchen to unpack dinner.

“How do you feel?” Oliver asked.

“Fine,” she said automatically. “You look tired. Have you slept?”

“I’m a little more worried about you.”

“That’s a no, then.” She held the blanket even tighter.

“Are you cold?”

“No. Yeah. I just had a weird dream.” Felicity looked down. “And, no, I didn’t remember anything.”

“I wasn’t going to--”

“Yes, you were.”

He sighed. The fatigue was radiating off of him.

“Come sit down,” she said, wishing she could remember more. She had only the vaguest impression of him being an asshole, before the gap in her memory started. But he did look wrecked. “Please?”

Oliver shuffled across the room and sat down next to her, leaning his head back against the sofa. Up close, his eyes were almost bruised, his mouth lined. Felicity felt suddenly guilty. This was her fault, even if she didn’t know why or how.

“Close your eyes,” she suggested. “I won’t let them eat all the lasagna without you.”

“I don’t think.”

“Oliver. Close your eyes just for a little bit.”  _ Come on. Don’t be a hero. _

He closed his eyes.

Two minutes later, Lyla and John returned from the kitchen, carrying plates of food they’d fixed already. Felicity held her finger to her lips, nodding towards Oliver. His head still throw back, his mouth open. He snored very gently. It was adorable. Diggle shook his head and handed Felicity her bowl of minestrone and the three of them began to eat in silence. It was a little strange, but they’d had weirder meals.

At one point, John dropped his fork onto the hardwood floor with a clank. They all froze and turned to look at Oliver. He twitched.  _ Nothing to see here. Go back to sleep _ , Felicity thought at him.  _ Everything’s fine. _ He licked his lips once, and was out cold again.

“Close call,” Lyla murmured.

“He didn’t sleep,” John said. “The whole time.”

“I’m sorry,” Felicity whispered.

“You know that’s not what I meant. It's not on you.”

“I’m still sorry.”

They finished their meal, packed the leftovers in the fridge, and did the dishes. Felicity got ready for bed. Oliver didn’t move an inch. They let him sleep.

 

* * *

 

Going to work the next morning was a bit of an out of body experience. When she woke up, Oliver was gone and Lyla was back, watching CNN with the sound off.

“Do you, like, work for me now?” Felicity asked, while they shared coffee and toast.

“Just doing a favor for Johnny. I kind of owe him one.”

“The Russia stuff?”

“The Russia stuff. Anyway, I’ll probably sleep over here tonight. If it’s okay with you.”

“And if it’s not okay with me?”

“I’ll probably sleep in the hall.”

“Okay, then. I’m gonna go get dressed.”

Felicity pulled out the kind of outfit she usually wore: color-blocked, structured, cute. But suddenly it didn’t look like enough. It wasn’t like she was particularly modest. She had a great body and no inclination to disguise the fact. But for some reason, today, the cap sleeve pinstripe dress she pulled out just looked too bare. Her pajamas felt much safer. She dove back into her closet and came out with her longest black pencil skirt, black tights, ankle boots, and a soft pink blouse with a high collar and long sleeves. Much better.

Lyla dropped her off at the front door, watching to make sure she entered the building. It made Felicity feel a little bit like the first day of school. She kept her hands buried firmly in her coat pockets as she rode the elevator up to the executive floor.

“This is not the first day of school, Smoak,” she muttered to herself. “This is not Vegas. And you are a grown ass woman.”

The other admin staff waved hello and asked her if she was feeling better, the usual pleasantries. Felicity smiled and said non-committal things about her appetite, slipping into Oliver’s outer office with as much haste as possible. More than ever, she wished the damn thing wasn’t made of glass. It felt even more like a fishbowl than usual. It was a huge relief when Oliver appeared.

“Oh good,” she said. “I hate being the only fish in the tank.”

“You should have woken me up last night,” he said, frowning.

Felicity shrugged, not in the mood for an argument. Besides, he looked less like death warmed over. Although he was carrying himself like he had a crick in the neck.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Tired of being asked how I’m feeling. Salmonella is exhausting”

“I had salmonella once,” he offered, smiling ruefully. “Something Tommy dared me to eat in Tijuana after we ate the worm in the tequila bottle.”

“After the worm? Please don’t tell me what it was.” Felicity put a hesitant hand to her still-questionable stomach.

“I won’t--I don’t remember.”

She shook her head. “Well, I know how that goes. I should have more answers about my trip tonight, when I can, um, research more creatively.”

“Good, I was thinking--”

“Oliver.” Isabel was in the doorway, without warning, sharp with content and malice. “Miss Smoak, you’re looking...acceptable. Food poisoning suits your figure, at any rate.

“Isabel,” Oliver warned.

“Oh, relax.” She sounded bored. “I’m sure you kept her safe in bed the whole time.”

Felicity felt like she could smell the ill will, like burnt hair. There was a heavy metallic taste in her mouth, bad coffee and blood. She wanted to spit it out, but her mouth was so dry. Her vision was tunneling out. Isabel was still talking. Oliver was talking back. Their voices were raise. No one was looking at her, so she took it upon herself to step towards the desk, put her hand out, and used it to break her fall when she fainted.

When she felt Oliver’s rough hands on her face, her eyes fluttered open again.

“Felicity,” he said. “Felicity.”

“Is she gone?” she whispered.

“Yeah. She’s gone. Shit. Are you okay?”

“Well. I’m on the floor. Which is not great.” She started to push herself up.

“Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?”

“I’m sitting up, Oliver. Are you going to help or what?” She held her hand out, and he took it in his warmed, calloused grip. “What the hell was that?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Something about Isabel…” Felicity made a face, the taste in her mouth returning.

“Diggle’s going to take you home.”

“What? No, I’m fine.”

“Felicity,” he said firmly, holding both hands in his. “You disappeared for three days. And just now you passed out. At work. Go home. Come back Monday.”

“Fine,” she said mutinously. “But I’ll see you later tonight.”

Oliver was going to protest again, she could tell, but then John’s figure appeared outside the fishbowl. He looked at her, on the floor, and heaved a sigh.

“We have to stop meeting like this.”

 

* * *

 

“Long time no see,” Lyla said breezing in the front door. “What happened?”

Felicity, who was standing on the kitchen counter, digging through the topmost of her cupboards, looked at her, and looked away.

“Listen, Johnny told me about today.”

“I’m sure he did.”

“Do you want to talk about it?"

“No need. I know what happened. Aha!” Felicity pulled out the Danish cookie tin that she’d been looking for. “I know it was here somewhere.”

“So what happened?”

“Isabel Rochev put the evil eye on me.” Felicity climbed down and took the lid off the tin.

“Um.” Apparently Lyla’s cool resolve was being tested. “She’s certainly an unpleasant--”

“It’s not a metaphor. That bitch gave me the ayin hara.” Felicity pulled out a necklace, a cloisonne hamsa the size of a silver dollar. She followed it with several evil eye bracelets, made of sturdy red string. Then she pulled out a small silver tube. “Can you hand me my phone? I want to hang the mezuzah, but I can’t remember how. There’s an app for that.”

“Felicity, slow down.” Lyla raised a hand. “I think it might be worth it to see a doctor. We have physicians we can trust, discreet.”

“No,” Felicity said firmly. “No, I don’t want a doctor. I don’t want to be touched or poked or prodded in any way, shape, or form.”

“Felicity.”

“What I want, is to hang this mezuzah. So that is what I am going to do. And then I am going to have some leftover soup. And then I am going to the club and I am going to hack until I have answers. That is what I am going to do.”

“Okay.” Lyla was no fool. “Where do you keep your tools?”

 

* * *

 

Felicity hacked. And hacked. And hacked. She had her wireless, noise canceling headphones on. She didn’t hear Oliver on the salmon ladder and she didn’t look up at him. She was in the zone, which was why John approached her from the front, waving to get her attention. Grudgingly, Felicity pulled off her headphones and set them around her neck.

“Have you found anything?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ve found everything.”

It didn’t take long for her to cut the camera footage together into a coherent narrative. Oliver and John stood behind her to watch while she narrated, her ghostly black and white form drifting in and out of frame.

“Okay, so. Something happens at the Queens’ party. I remember being upset and then…” She spread her hands. “So here I am leaving the mansion, in my dress. I walked down to the end of the driveway and, according to my cell phone, that’s where I pick up an Uber. The Uber takes me down to Starling Central Station. Where I arrive just in time to catch the train to Central City.”

“That’s Barry Allen,” John said.

“Yeah.” Felicity swallowed. “There we are, sitting together on the train.” She and Barry talked animatedly, gesturing. “I bet we’re discussing the accelerator. Anyway, we’re too late to see it. Look at the timestamp. Probably for the best, considering what happened. I guessed we would have gone somewhere to look at it, which is where I catch us walking into the police precinct. Maybe his lab has a good view?”

“Maybe,” Oliver said, his voice carefully neutral.

“Then...the accident.” The camera footage changed from grainy to static to black. “I have no idea what happens after that,” she admitted quietly. “It’s hours before I find myself again. This footage is from a bodega in a, um, transitional neighborhood. I’m walking to the train station.”

On the computer screen, in the wee hours of the morning, Felicity walked by the bodega. Her gait was steady, but somewhat aimless. She was going in the direction of the train station, but she was weaving a little on the sidewalk. From the left, someone approached her, a busty woman in a tiny latex dress and wobbly heels.

“The strap is broken on her shoe,” Felicity said. “Do you see it?”

“Nobody’s looking at her shoes,” Diggle muttered.

“Watch.”

On screen Felicity stopped, approached the woman, and touched her lightly on the shoulder. Then Felicity took of her shoes, knelt, and physically put them on the other woman. Then she took off her coat, and draped it around the woman’s shoulders. Then, Felicity continued on to the station.

“It must have been cold,” John commented.

“The low was thirty-eight that night,” she confirmed.

“Jesus, Felicity,” Oliver said.

“Anyway,” she forged on. “I made it to the train station, which is where I spent the night. I think.”

“There’s still forty-eight hours missing.”

“I think I spent it on the trains.”

“How?” Diggle said. “You didn’t have any money.”

“I know. It was all in my coat. I don’t know how I did it. But there’s one shot of me, at a stop in Humboldt. Watch this.” She tapped a few keys.

Footage from a different station began playing. Felicity was there, in black and white, looking more bedraggled than before. A station attendant approached her, hands on hips, annoyed. He gestured, pointing past her towards the exit. Felicity reached up and touched his hand. The man relaxed immediately and his hand swept out in a gesture towards the open door of a waiting train. He even gave a little bow.

“What the hell?” Oliver turned on his heel.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Now what?” John asked.

“We need to talk to Barry,” Felicity said. “I would have thought of it sooner, if I remembered that I’d left with him. Or even that I was going to Central City. But I didn’t.”

“That’s going to be a problem,” Oliver said, trading looks with Diggle.

“Why?”

“We can’t ask Barry,” John said softly.

“Why can’t we ask Barry?” she asked. “Oliver?”

“He was injured in the accelerator accident. He’s in a coma.”

“What!” She leapt to her feet. “When were you going to tell me? Were you going to tell me?”

“We were, I promise.” Diggle held up his hands, appeasing. “Lyla contacted me today to let me know that things in Central City have gotten interesting.”

“Interesting?” Felicity asked pointedly. “Interesting?”

Oliver stalked away, in the direction of the training mats.

“You shouldn’t go out tonight,” she said to his back. “Not like that.”

“Like what?” He turned around.

“You have that look you get.”

“I was looking at the training dummy!”

“Yeah, but I could still see all the black-fly-thoughts buzzing around your head.” She waved her hand in his direction.

“Felicity, are you...seeing things?” John had his 100% certified zen mission mask on. It looked like jade.

“Nothing that’s not already there,” she said tartly. “Just like your face.”

Oliver and Diggle exchanged a look.

“Has my face always looked like this?” John asked, like he was already sizing her up for a white coat.

“It’s the face you get when you’re upset and you’re trying to show it because it’s not constructive, but you’re filing it away for later, either to ambush one of us or say something unexpected and nice.”

“There have been rumors,” John said, looking at Oliver. “Chatter that ARGUS has picked up.”

“Rumors?” she asked.

“In Central City. About things that have been happening to people there since the accident.”

“John.” Oliver was warning him.   


“I want to try something.” John reached across the desk and picked up the day’s paper. “What does this man look like to you?” He tapped the photo on the cover.

“Well… You’ll have to get me a better copy.”

“Why?”

“That one’s all blurry.”

“Felicity,” Oliver said quietly from behind her. “There’s nothing wrong with the photo.”

“Yeah, there is. It’s over-developed or over-exposed or something. Like there’s two faces there instead of one. I can’t even read the name.”

“That’s Harrison Wells,” John said. “And there’s nothing wrong with the paper.”

“No.” She looked back and forth between her two best friends in the world. “What the hell is happening to people in Central City?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Insomnia leads to compulsive writing. Please flag my typos because I don't see them anymore!


	3. The Metamorphosis

It didn’t occur to them that something was really wrong until Oliver started firing arrows directly in the lair’s ceiling lights.

“What the hell is happening to people in Central City?” Felicity had asked, and then kind of shrieked, before everything went to pot.

There was panic in her throat and chest. She held her hand over her heart, and the old hamsa she’d unearthed earlier in the day, and felt her heart thumpering away there. It was so fast, it only scared her worse. John was there, telling her to breathe or calm down. Oliver was yelling. She didn’t think he was yelling at her, but she couldn’t be sure.

Then the arrows started to fly and a shower of sparks rained down over them. Felicity screeched and threw herself under the desk, startled out of her panic. She was breathing like she’d just run the 400 and Oliver was doing the same.

“Calm is contagious,” John said calmly. “Calm is contagious.”

“Did you just shoot the ceiling?” Felicity asked quietly.

“I did.” Oliver looked down at the bow in his hand. “I did do that.”

“Everybody be cool,” John said. “But I think we have a problem.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“Felicity. Take a breath. Calm is contagious.”

“Yeah, right,” she muttered. But she did take a nice slow breath. “Calm is contagious,” she repeated.

Oliver sat down very carefully on the training mat.

“We’re in over our heads,” John said.

“You didn’t answer my question. About Central City.” Felicity swiped at her eyes, which were somewhat damp.

“There’s nothing confirmed yet. It’s all anecdotal.”

“John, come on. Please.”

“Tell us,” Oliver said.

“Okay.” John sighed. “It seems like people there are changing.”

“Changing how?” Oliver laced his fingers together in front of him, a gesture of strength of will. Felicity could see the cool mantle of control that he slowly draped over himself. Like, she could actually see it. It was silky, charcoal gray, and it covered him like water running over rocks.

“I can see feelings,” she blurted out. “I can see like…” Her head swiveled towards John. “You’re missing Lyla. I can see your keffiyeh, from deployment. I mean, you’re always missing Lyla, but now I can see it. You probably wish she was here. Oliver, you’re putting your game face on, but there’s something kind of squirmy under the surface, which makes me think you’re going to do something stupid in the near future.”

“We are,” Oliver confirmed, “in way over our heads. I’m going to reach out to a contact who might be able to help.”

“Who ya gonna call?” Felicity asked, unable to help herself.

John snorted.

“I know a guy,” Oliver said grimly. "Give me a minute."

The drive to Felicity’s place was torture. Felicity sat in the backseat of John’s car, arms crossed, trying not to think about any of the thousands of people moving in traffic around them. The boys talked about the fastest route and then lapsed into complete silence. They were rigid and attentive and their stiff posture was going to make her nuts. Finally she snapped and asked them to turn on the radio.

John quickly obliged, flipping quickly from R&B to a classical station.

“And now,” said the dulcet tones of the DJ, “ Górecki’s  _ Symphony of Sorrowful Songs,  _ inspired by the words etched by an eighteen year old girl into the walls of her Gestapo prison ce--”

Oliver hit the power button with such lightning speed that Felicity was afraid he might break it.

“Silence is good,” she said. "Silence works." And then: “Stop the car!”

“Are you okay?” Oliver twisted in the seat as John hit the brakes.

“Liquor store.”

The detour lasted five minutes and she didn’t even feel bad that Oliver paid. Once in the car, she opened up one of the tiny boxed wines and began to drink with gusto.

“Um,” Oliver said.

“Felicity,” John ventured. “I know there isn’t much of a police presence in this town, but the open container laws are still generally enforced.”

“And I’m pretty sure I could talk a cop into forgetting homicide right now.” She thought about the way she’d touched the station agents on security film, how they’d immediately allowed her to board. “I’m never waiting in line for coffee again.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Just...get me back to my place. Please.”

“Of course.”

 

* * *

 

Oliver's guy turned out to be British, quippy, with improbably blonde hair and a trenchcoat that had seen better days. He appeared in a cloud of acrid vapor in Felicity’s living room. She hoped it wouldn’t set off the smoke detector, because that thing was loud as hell. Plus, she didn’t think her nerves could take it. Although she had just downed two generous pours of red wine, and was slowly sipping a third. So her nerves had at least improved from the hiding-under-the-desk variety.

“John Constantine.”

“Felicity Smoak.”

“At your service.” He offered his hand and she moved to shake it. But instead he picked it up Medieval Times style and kissed it before dropping it like a hot potato. “Why didn’t you sods warn me she was a live wire?”

“Sorry,” Felicity said. She flushed and tucked her hand away in the pocket of her sweatshirt.

“Hey,” Digg said defensively. “We don’t know what’s going on. That’s why we called you.”

“Is that your idea of a joke?” Constantine asked, looking from Diggle to Oliver and back. 

“No,” Oliver growled. “It’s not.”

“What’s Ravenscar?” Felicity asked without thinking, the name surfacing in her head.

Constantine looked at her, alarmed. “First off, lads, we’re going to need to get her some gloves.”

“I’m not contagious,” she objected, although maybe she totally was.

“No,” Constantine said. “You’re a bit more dangerous than that.”

Felicity flinched, taking a step back.

“Listen, duck, it’s not your fault. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s these dumb bastards.”

“Hey--”

“You people wouldn’t recognize a psychometric empath if she jumped up and bit you on the arse.”

“A what?” Diggle said.

“There’s no such thing,” Felicity said. 

“Constantine,” Oliver said.

“Let’s do a little experiment, shall we? Queen, hand her something of yours. Something personal.”

“Constantine,” he repeated in a growl.

“Here.” Diggle pulled something out of his pocket, a peace offering. It was a key on a nondescript ring. No label. He held it out and Felicity took it into her palm. It sat there, warming slightly, until suddenly the edges started to bleed a little and she could smell Lyla’s shampoo on a warm pillowcase and-- 

“This is a key to Lyla's place. You and Lyla are sleeping together again. You and Lyla are sleeping together again! Mazel.”

“Give me that.” Diggle snatched it back, looking adorably scandalized.

“Naughty boy,” Constantine said approvingly. “So. You see what you’re dealing with?”

“I am a live wire,” Felicity said faintly. “Sort of. It mostly feels like I’m, like, picking up things that other people have dropped. Or that are just floating around them. I’m definitely taking things in. It’s harder to put out. Not, I mean, that’s it’s hard for me to put out, put out. But I don’t put out all that often either. I tried the whole hook-up culture thing like one time, but that was also the same night as the peanuts brownie. And the only thing that got put out then was the contents of my stomach. Since then, I think I put out about average for my demographic, given the givens.”

“Is she always like this?” Constantine asked.

“Yes,” she confirmed, before one of the boys could say something stupid. “I’m a conductor.”

“You, duck, are annealed copper. This is, I gather, a new development.”

“Like...four days ago.” She sat down heavily on her sofa. There was an industrial accident in Central City. Word is that I’m not the only one, you know...fucked up.”

“You’re not fucked up,” Oliver said firmly.

“She’s a little fucked up,” Constantine amended.

“I have a question,” Felicity said. “I’ve consumed enough X-Men media to know the answer. But I’m going to ask it anyway. There’s no coming back from this, right? No Control Z?"

Constantine shook his head. “If it hasn’t worn off in four days, I’m afraid not. This is the new you. But it probably won’t get much worse, either. Probably.”

She put her head in her hands.

“Hey.” Oliver’s voice was close. He’d clearly knelt beside her, placing a hand on her shoulder. He smelled like bergamot and concern. “You’re going to be okay. Digg and I are going to make sure of it.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” Constantine said wryly. “There are some concrete steps we can take right his moment to make you more comfortable. I hope you like long sleeves. Best to keep yourself covered up, at least in public.”

“A frum Smoak woman.” Felicity felt faint. “My mother’s going to stroke out.”

“I’m no help with mothers,” Constantine pointed out the obvious. “But I see you’ve already put on an amulet. Your instinct was good, but you’re going to need more powerful charms than these.”

“Oh good,” she said dryly. “Accessories.”

“Am I correct in assuming you are of a Hebrew persuasion?”

“You are correct.”

“Very good. I come equipped for all sorts, you know.” Constantine began to rummage through multiple inner pockets. It was clearly the Mary Poppins’ bag of coats. He produced a small orange prescription bottle, which he tossed to her. “First off, benzos. Take as many as you need, whenever you feel like you’re going to ex- or im-plode.” Next, he produced a modest silver necklace with a pendant. 

“What is it?” Diggle asked skeptically.

“This,” Constantine said with reverence, “is the Magen David that Louis Brandeis’ tailor sewed into the hem of his suit trousers before his confirmation hearings.”

“Give it,” Felicity demanded. He dropped it into her hand and she fastened it around her neck. It felt steady, resolute.  _ Come through, Justice Brandeis _ .

“Now this.” Constantine produced a modest bracelet of red thread. “It’s not strictly Jewish, more of that Madonna crap, but it did guard Britney Spears through 2007.”

“Oh damn.” She held her wrist out and let him tie it on. He could be lying, but it felt to her like the thread had been through the wars, so to speak, and had not disintegrated.  _ Britney survived 2007. I will survive this. _

“Now. That’s a serviceable enough mezuzah you have on the front, but you’ll want something stronger for the door to your bedroom. To keep the dreams away.” 

_ Of course _ , she thought.  _ That was Lyla’s dream about the market. I dreamed her dream. _

Constantine began digging through another set of interior pockets and retrieved a small olive wood box with a carved shin barely visible on its surface, as though generations had touched the Hebrew letter as they passed in and out of doors. Felicity held her hand out and as soon as it made contact, she could feel it surround her. Heat, groves of olive trees, busy towns, imperial decrees, burning, the black friars, flight.  _ Mir veln zey iberleben _ . She looked up at Constantine, a lump in her throat.

“Hidden by conversos and passed into my care when it was time. If it survived the Dominicans, it can surely survive you.” He winked. “I almost forgot. Hold on a mo, I think I have a copy.” He reached in and pulled out a paperback book.

“Mrs. Dalloway?” she asked.

“A tale of two empaths,” he clarified.

“Thanks. I think.”

“Trust me, you’re going to need Woolf. She understood empathy, as a talent. Besides,” he gestured to Oliver and Diggle, “these two will be no help. They have the emotional intelligence quotient of particleboard furniture.”

Felicity smiled, then stopped suddenly. “Didn’t Virginia Woolf kill herself?”

“Yes, but her suicide note is true poetry.”

Oliver threw up his hands.

“One more question,” she said, trying to forestall the argument. “But if this is an issue with the particle accelerator, are these,” she gestured to the gifts, “going to help? I am very thankful for them, and your advice, but I usually prefer to fight science with science.”

“Why my dear Ms. Smoak. Don’t you recall Clarke’s second law?”

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible,” she recited.

“No, not that one. That’s not the one.”

“You probably meant the third: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

“Right you are. And any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.”

“I...what?”

“Constantine has that effect on people,” Oliver commented drily.

“Right.” Constantine bent down and gave her two quick French air-kisses.. “I wish you the best of luck, love. You’re going to need it.”

 

* * *

 

“You’re sure you actually want us to stay.” Digg looked appropriately skeptical.

“I’m sure.” Felicity took a deep breath. “Well, not really. But the thing is, I can tell that neither one of you is going to sleep if I don’t agree.”

“Can you see what we’re thinking?” he asked, darting a quick glance at Oliver. 

“No, but I don’t really need to.” She shrugged. “You guys aren’t exactly slick. I can usually guess anyway.”

Oliver tried, and failed, not to smile.

“John should go,” Felicity said. “He misses Lyla.”

“Can you really see the keffiyeh?” John asked, narrowing his eyes.

“It’s right there in front of me. Just kind of...shadowy.”

“She’s not going to believe this.”

“John?” Oliver said quietly. “Don’t overshare.”

“We can trust Lyla,” Felicity said quickly, because she knew it was true. “Besides, ARGUS is going to have their hands full.”

“What do you mean?” John asked, as they both turned to look at her.

“It’s not like I was the only one there for the accident.” She sounded bleak, but couldn’t help it. “Ten bucks says Central City’s going to be crawling with people like me.”

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” John offered.

“What does that mean?”

“Something my mom used to say when she was tired and didn’t want to do the dinner dishes. Take care, Felicity. Oliver. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She shut the door behind him, and turned back to her guest. “Go ahead. Ask.”

“You said you couldn’t read minds,” Oliver said, smiling but not meeting her eyes.

“I said I didn’t need to, at least with you.” With that, Felicity returned to her wine. “You’re wearing your self-control still. It’s like somebody dipped you in graphite. There’s nothing to see.”

“You seem to be taking this really well.”

“Well, I’m really pretty drunk,” she collapsed onto the sofa, almost fully relaxed in body if not in spirit. “Tomorrow morning is going to be a different story.”

“I meant what I said, Felicity.” He sat beside her. “We won’t let anything happen to you.” 

“I know you mean it,” she said. “But it already did.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I wish I remembered what you said to me, at your mom’s party. Or what you did.”

“I…” He spread his hands in defeat.

“I know you don’t know what it was. Empathy was never your gift.” She smiled sadly.  “I always thought hacking was my superpower.”

“Hacking didn’t get me out of the QC garage when I was bleeding to death, Felicity. You did.”

They sat for a while in silence while Felicity finished her glass of wine. After that, with Oliver’s sober supervision, she hung her second mezuzah in as many days. Then she allowed him to gently shepherd her in the direction of her bedroom. He watched while she drank one glass of water, and then he left another on her bedside table.

“You shouldn’t be drinking on an empty stomach,” he observed.

“Yep.” She pulled her duvet up and buried herself in her bed. There’s stuff to make up the sofa in the hall closet. Do not open the box marked ‘Dongles’ or I will have to kill you.”

“I will not touch your dongles.”

Felicity snorted. “I made you say dongle.”

“Good night, Felicity.”

“Night, Oliver.”

She woke up in the middle of the night with a bladder so full she thought she might actually pop. Also, she was still a little tipsy. But she tiptoed past Oliver to the bathroom, took a very satisfactory whiz, and washed her hands. Then she remembered she hadn’t washed her face or brushed her teeth earlier, so she did that too. Feeling much more grown-up and ready for bed, she slipped back into the living room and stopped dead.

Oliver was sleeping, or at least dozing, on her sofa. But above him was his dream. It was as if it had been drawn in cigarette smoke in the air over his body. A man, a huge man, gripped Oliver by the throat and squeezed, ghostly arms bulging. On the sofa, Oliver twitched and moaned. She had no idea what to do. It seemed like a bad idea to wake him up in the middle of a nightmare. It seemed like a worse idea to let him suffer. Uncertain, she took one step closer and leveled her index finger at the apparition. She put her shoulders back in the imperious way her grandmother always did when someone needed scolding.

“Gay avek,” she whispered, just as her Baba did. “Gay. Avek.”

The enormous smoke-man-dream was swept aside, and the smoke turned to tiny stars, and the stars fell onto Oliver’s sleeping form. Felicity went back to bed, drank her water, and prayed to G-d that things would make more sense in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're ever feeling too upbeat, check out Gorecki's Symphony #3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmDuqL23gN0


	4. The Hours

For the next few months of Felicity’s life, she began for the first time to acquire a glimmer of understanding as to what it really meant to live a double life. Before her little...change of life? Glow-up? What was she even supposed to call it? Anyway, before, she thought she’d understood. But it was more like having a secret second job hidden in a basement. Now she had a secret second person hidden under her own skin. She was still Felicity Smoak, EA flop and IT whiz. But she was also suddenly a stranger to herself, whose life no longer fit at the edges.

She wore bodycon dresses still, but they all had long sleeves. Her skirts were short, but she had invested a small army into cute, bold, and patterned tights. She wore more boots and gloves, always gloves in public. She brought her own folding bluetooth keyboard to work, and a different one to the lair, in her chic new satchel. Inside were also her benzos, spare gloves, and Constantine’s copy of  _ Mrs. Dalloway _ .

Felicity had read it twice in a week, and then read  _ Cymbeline _ , too, just to cover her bases. She understood exactly none of it. Undaunted, she turned to what she thought might be more practical sources, more instructional. These turned out to be profoundly unhelpful self-help tomes and woo-woo books by women with names like Madame Firedancer and Angel Lashes. On the off chance that Angel Lashes really had some kind of cosmic connection, Felicity bought a lot of crystal bracelets off of etsy. For psychic protection. Crazy went with everything, right? Especially if you didn’t know what the fuck you were doing and sometimes you sobbed hysterically in the work bathroom because the lunch lady who served you really missed her dead cat? No wonder Mantis had split into five psychological parts. (The rest of Felicity’s research had come from comic books.) QC was full of people who missed their pets or resented their co-workers or hated themselves. It was a minefield.

Keeping her new talents under control underneath the club was even harder. She was close with her partners and she could see and smell and taste almost everything they felt. When she’d come back from visiting Barry, and Oliver had told her to get her head out of Central City, Felicity had opened her mouth to say something smart. Instead she’d gagged.

“What is  _ wrong _ with you?” she said, covering her mouth and stumbling away from him. It was stinging and pungent and foul. “G-d, Oliver. It’s like...a mouthful of charred jellyfish.” Felicity half-ran to the stairs. “I’m not coming back until you get that out of your system. It’s toxic.”

More than other people, she felt the boys’ everything. And Oliver, of course, more than Digg. Both of these secrets she kept to herself. What they didn’t know would hurt only her. It wasn’t until some time later, when Sara (whose Canary mask was always visible) was formally invited to Team Arrow, that Felicity caught a whiff of the burnt jellyfish smell again, on her own clothes.

“Oh shit,” she muttered as she threw her odiferous camisole directly into the trash. “Shit, shit, shit.” Because that was the smell of the jealous fear of rejection. She wasn’t cute, she wasn’t powerful, she was just a sad little girl who didn’t want to be shoved aside for a better model. Again. Felicity stayed home from work that day, afraid she might drive the entire building to distraction if not homicide.

When Tockman blew up her servers, she thought for a second that it might have been her that did it, just out of sheer maddening frustration. Then Sara and Oliver left for family dinner. As John looked on, she resorted to the benzos. He asked thoughtful, probing questions. And finally, she dropped her tools in exasperation.

“John,” she said patiently and firmly. “This is a little more about my childhood trauma than about Sara. I know this, because I have been reading a lot of obnoxious literature lately. If you repeat any of this, just remember: I can kill you with my brain.”

“O-kay.”

“My dad ditched me and my mom when I was young and impressionable. My mom then tried to replace him with a string of boyfriends who never stuck. I have a deep-seated fear of abandonment, replacement, and not being good enough. Are you picking up what I’m putting down.”

“I am.”

“Then let us never speak of this again.”

And they didn’t, until Felicity got herself the teensiest little bit shot. Sara volunteered, but Felicity didn’t want to risk it. She asked John to do the stitching, with gloves. Oliver stood with his back towards her. She felt especially naked with her shirt off, like all the feelings in the lair might gang up on her at once.

“No drugs,” she told John. “I’m afraid of what they’ll do with the...you know…”

“The what?” Sara asked.

John looked at Felicity, Felicity looked at the back of Oliver’s head. Hard.  _ Not a word _ , she thought at him.  _ Silence _ .

“Nothing,” Oliver said. “But she can’t do this without drugs.”

“I’ll give her a local,” Digg assured him.

Sara narrowed her eyes, watching Felicity with something that didn’t feel like suspicion. Understandably, Sara was careful with her feelings, even if she didn’t know what Felicity was. Sara wasn’t suspicious now, but Felicity could smell mint and limes. Curiosity.

_ I am nobody. I am nobody. I am nobody _ .

Sara tilted her head. But she looked away, apparently bored. When the stitching was over, and John had helped Felicity back into her prim button-up shirt, Oliver approached.

“You alright?” He smelled like bergamot, but that was just his Oliver smell.

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask before I invited Sara in,” he said. “I didn’t think about how might affect your…”

“Oh. No, it’s not that. I just got used to being your girl.” She winced. “Your girl Friday, so to speak. Not your girl in the I’m-wearing-your-letter-jacket sense. Do people do that anymore? Maybe more like--”

“Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“You’ll always be my girl,” Oliver said. And he meant it. It felt like a cashmere silk blend.

It was not a bad way to end the day. Diggle drove her home and left her some of the good drugs. When she locked the apartment door behind her, Felicity took one of the pills. Her shoulder hurt like hell and there was no one nearby whose feelings might spill over. In addition to numbing the pain, the drugs did make her more relaxed. She turned on her DVR, where she had accumulated several hours of Animal Planet’s  _ Too Cute! _ for just these occasions.

It was hard to say whether she was stoned or particularly receptive, but the puppies really were too cute. They were so damn fluffy. And fat. Like hairy little potatoes that went hrm, hrm, hrm. The show was like melatonin, but so, so much better. She nodded off before any of the litters had even opened their eyes.

She did not exactly wake up. She simply closed her eyes to puppies and opened them with her phone on and in her hand. Felicity knew exactly what was going on and she had no idea what was happening.

“Talk to me,” Diggle was saying. “You’re starting to worry me, girl. Talk.”

“John? John!”

“What?” he asked calmly, even though she could hear the screeching of tires in the background.

“Oliver is afraid,” she said, trying to explain. “It’s the man from the nightmare, who was choking him. I sent him away, in the nightmare, but now he’s real.”

“What are you talking about? Is he there?”

“No! He’s not here. I don’t know where he is. They are. But Oliver’s afraid.”

“I’m on my way to your place.”

“No!” she yelled. “Don’t. Just go straight to him.”

“Felicity.”

“He’s scared, John. Not me. Oliver.”

“Okay. Okay, I’m headed to the mansion now.”

Felicity hung up and then put the phone in her lap and stared at it. Long distance. This was new. Then she saw it. It was a little ghostly string that appeared to be tied to her, on the inside? A rib, she guessed, or her sternum. It was very, very taut. Someone was jerking the other end of the string. And she knew who was on the other end.

_ She felt very young; at the same time, unspeakably aged, _ went the line from Constantine’s dam book.  _ She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. _

“This is bad,” Felicity said out loud. “This is so bad.”

The thread was another secret, another piece of her second self. It tugged when Oliver had a nightmare. She would wake up, holding her side. It hummed with energy when he was on patrol. It tangled itself around her when it was a bad patrol. It was warm when he and Sara were alone together, and Felicity was pretty sure she knew what that meant. Sometimes he smiled or nodded at her, and it became a ribbon that tied itself into elaborate little bows. Once, at their day, she came up with a particularly devious excuse for his tardiness.

“Brilliant,” he said.

Felicity went directly to the bathroom, to make sure it wasn’t visible in the mirror. She lifted up her chicken-in-a-beret sweater just to be sure. Nope, no ribbon. But Patty from accounting got an eyeful.

“Underwires, am I right?” said Patty.

Felicity wouldn’t know. She’d never needed them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise this will get a little more alternate as I go. I'm just kind of splashing around here.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity sighed, heavily, and lowered herself onto her sofa. She was awake, in the middle of the night, because somewhere, Oliver Queen had just had a nightmare. He bolted awake, so she bolted awake. He overcame these traumas with physical exertion and mental self-control. Felicity just watched her favorite sci fi shows over and over again.

Felicity sighed, heavily, and lowered herself onto her sofa. She was awake, in the middle of the night, because somewhere, Oliver Queen had just had a nightmare. He bolted awake, so she bolted awake. He overcame these traumas with physical exertion and mental self-control. Felicity just watched her favorite sci fi shows over and over again. Even the post-apocalyptic ones were comforting.  _ All of this has happened before _ , indeed.

She should tell Oliver about this new thing, the ribbon that tied them together, all of it. But he was happy, by his standards, at the moment, being with Sara. And that happiness, or what passed for it, trickled into Felicity’s ribcage as well. She didn’t want to mess with that, for either of them.

Also, she was ashamed. This was harder to admit. But she was. Felicity had been different (too smart, too loud, too short) for her entire life. She was used to it. But that was an explicable kind of different. It wasn’t this thing that made her feel like a freak. She kind of was a freak now, and she was ashamed of it. She was ashamed of being ashamed of it, the way she was still embarrassed by her mom.

Why couldn’t she have gotten a better superpower? Like…poise or dignity. Or class. She thought she’d given up on those in college, somewhere around the time one of the dick weasels in her Comp Sci class had made a comment about her flat chest and then  _ reached _ for said flat chest, so she’d broken two of his fingers with a trick her mom taught her for her thirteenth birthday. That was the reality of Felicity’s life. She was a girl from Vegas whose skill set included digital felonies and time-tested cocktail waitress defense maneuvers. In her wildest dreams, Felicity was a person who never forgot deodorant and made cucumber-mint water that she drank out of mason jars. Her new fantasy went like this: she would wake up one day, with perfect knowledge and control, and present her new powers with an  _ et voila _ to Oliver and Diggle.

But, just like her mom’s finger breaking technique, it would take practice. She couldn’t practice on random people. And she wouldn’t practice on animals. Which left only Isabel.

Felicity girded her loins with a black turtleneck sweater dress, electric blue tights, gray wedge booties, and the Brandeis charm. In the parking lot, she gave herself a final once over, then strode into the executive elevator to do battle with the forces of evil. She gave everyone her usual bright smile, poured herself a cup of black coffee, and sat down to do work. At her sternum, her little heart-ribbon (what else was she supposed to call the damn thing) gave a little thrill. So she was ready when he came into view.

“Good morning, Felicity,” Oliver said.

“Boom boom boom.”

“...Alright.”

“There are eight reports on your desk. You have to read them all, especially the one in the middle.”

“Which one in the middle.”

“I forget. But if you don’t read that one, you’re going to flunk the lunch meeting.”

“You forget.”

“Guess you better read all of them.”

“Felicity.”

“Oliver.” She raised a perfectly lined brow. He capitulated and went in to read at least four reports. Her heart ribbon tied itself into a very smug little bow.

Buoyed somewhat, Felicity turned her attention to the shiksa across the hall. She could just see Isabel’s profile. The range wasn’t ideal, but as long as she was careful, she wouldn’t blast anyone else.  _ You like me _ , Felicity thought-felt at the other woman.  _ You really like me _ . Nothing.  _ YOU REALLY LIKE ME _ . No response.

She remembered how her Baba’s scolding gesture had frightened away Oliver’s nightmare. But this wasn’t a scolding type situation. Over the next hour, she experimented. She tried Spidey’s web hand, gyan mudra, the traditional sign against evil, finger guns, and even the dukhanen. Still nothing. But was it surprising? Unlike her Baba’s accusing pointer finger, none of those gestures meant anything to her personally. 

Felicity stood up, took herself to the ladies room, and then got more coffee. As she was pouring from the silver carafe, a rogue sunbeam somehow escaped the Seattle cloud cover. It struck the reflective surface and, for a moment, blinded her with golden light.

“Oh,” she said out loud. “Oh!”

Stu from accounting was behind her when she turned to leave the breakroom. She smiled at him, a real smile, full of triumph and confidence. In her wake, Stu tripped over his feet and took down a whole cart of creamers and sugars and stir straws. Felicity did not even hear it. She settled down in her desk chair. Inhaling deeply, she made a wide waving gesture, from her elbow. It was a bit like one of those hackneyed ‘how’ greetings that American Indians always made spaghetti westerns. But her cultural touchstone was a little more recent.

“I am the Bad Wolf,” she whispered, and waved her hand again. “I create myself. I take the words; I scatter them in time and space.”  _ You like me. You like me. You like me. You like me. _

Across and down the hall, through numerous panes of glass, Isabel Rochev jumped to her feet and looked around in alarm. 

“You are tiny,” Felicity said, warm with achievement. She sipped her coffee and tried not to cackle. With limited success.

But practice had consequences. That night, sitting at the lair’s computers, watching a program run, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes just a second… And woke up when John tapped her lightly on the shoulder. 

“You okay?” he asked.

“Peachy.” She blinked hard and put her glasses back in the right place. But she could feel that he didn’t believe her. “I’m just tired because I’ve been...practicing.”

“Practicing?”

“Well, it seems like I’m a great receiver. I’m just working on my transmitter.”

“Oh, really.” John crossed his arms over his chest. “And just who have you been practicing on.”

“Isabel.”

“Are you serious?” Exasperation and disapproval smelled like burnt popcorn.

“I think it’s working.”

“How do you know?”

Felicity bit her lip. “She told me I was doing a satisfactory job. She looked like she was going to puke when she said it, but she did say it.”

“Felicity.” John pinched the bridge of his nose. “You can’t just go around making people feel things they don’t want to feel.”

“Isabel’s only barely a person,” she said defensively. “I haven’t tried to do anything but make her like me. I haven’t tried to read her at all, since she gave me the evil eye. Getting too close to her feels like…a walk in freezer.”

“This is a bad idea,” he insisted.

“Well of course it is. But what else am I supposed to do? I can’t move things with my mind. I don’t have an adamantium skeleton or laser vision or control metal or sexy shapeshift.”

“Are you just listing X-men powers?” Diggle asked, amused in spite of himself, alleviating the burnt popcorn that still hung in the air.

“What would you do if somebody gave you a brand new sniper rifle?” She pressed her advantage. “I bet you’d take it out to a firing range. Isabel is my firing range. I promise, I’m not doing anything worse than trying to put her in a good mood.”

“It’s not Isabel I’m worried about.”

“I’m fine.”

“Right.” He sighed. “Keep this under your hat, but I’m moving back in with Lyla.”

“John!” She clapped her hands together.

“I said keep it under your hat. Anyway. We’re...consolidating. Maybe I’ll bring a bed down here.”

The very next night, John did bring down his serviceable bed, with storage drawers underneath and a very nice mattress on top. It took Felicity about five minutes to turn it into a nest, with an outlet strip, a long string of lantern lights, and enough pillows to be truly decadent. After a long day of herding Oliver between conference rooms and trying to make Isabel nice, Felicity set the alarms on all the relevant programs, and curled up under a fleece blanket with a picture of an x-wing on it and the slogan ‘This machine kills fascists.’ She had weird, technicolor dreams about her Baba and woke up when Oliver and Digg returned from patrol.

“When did we get a bed?” Oliver asked.

“It’s my bed,” Felicity said sleepily, pushing herself up from the pillow pile. The ribbon was vibrating with Oliver’s annoyance.

“When did Felicity get a bed?”

“Since she started training her, uh, other talents.”

“I’m right here,” she said, climbing out and straightening her skirt, which seemed to have ridden up a little.

“John?” Oliver said, looking away.

“Literally, right here,” she said, louder.

“When did you start...training?”

“A couple days ago. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. I don’t think Isabel feels a thing.”

“Felicity!” he looked horrified.

“Look, at least I’m not shooting our friends in their legs.”

John choked off a laugh.

“That was one time,” Oliver said, voice low. “Just once.”

“So far.”  
  


 

* * *

 

Felicity kept practicing. She also started getting mail, books mostly. She assumed they were from Constantine, since the postage was...odd. One book, an unnervingly fresh 1920 edition of  _ Jane Eyre _ was postmarked from Constantinople. She added it to the pile of reading material he’d sent ( _ Antigone _ by Jean Anouilh,  _ The Scarlet Pimpernel _ , etc.) and began to bring the books down to the lair with her. Her bed was a minefield of books and half-empty bottles of TUMS. The practice was making her stronger, more capable and confident, but John and Oliver still stressed her out.

But one morning, after she’d made her coffee and sat down at her desk, she looked across and down the hall at Isabel and almost passed out again. There was something really, really wrong with her. Underneath the model veneer, there was a new dead-inside-ness. It was kind of reptilian, like locking eyes with a crocodile at the zoo. Felicity had felt it before, inside Mirakuru-Roy. But Roy fought it. Constantly. His own anger and toughness encircled him like the red glow of a hot stove, beating back the saurian chill. But not Isabel.

As professionally as she could, Felicity let herself into Oliver’s private CEO bathroom and puked coffee-flavored bile into the marble sink. She looked up at herself in the mirror, pale and sweaty. She could probably get away with going home. But she didn’t want to be the team fuckup. That was the whole point of practice. So she blotted her face with Oliver’s linen (honestly linen) towels and went back to her desk and tried not to panic. She tried to bring it up with the boys, but it did not go as planned. To put it mildly.

“Felicity,” Digg said gently, and not a little condescendingly. “It is just a feeling.”

“First of all, I will be telling Lyla that you took that tone with me. Second of all, feeling is my superpower!”

“You’ve never liked Isabel,” Oliver said.

“True," she said boldly. "And not just because you shtupped her in Russia.”

“Say what?” John’s head swiveled around. “You slept with Isabel Rochev? While I was in prison?”

“Felicity.” Oliver picked apart each syllable. “What happened to what happens in Russia staying in Russia.”

“Seriously, while I was in prison?”

“What happened,” she said hotly, “was you shtupped her and I kept my mouth shut, but now she’s dead inside and you’re not listening to me.”

“I think your feelings,” Oliver emphasized the latter word, “are interfering with your judgment.”

“And I think your downstairs brain is interfering with yours!”

“Let’s all take a breath,” John proposed.

“No,” Felicity said firmly. “Let’s all listen to the woman who can tell that Roy and Thea are never going to stay broken up, Digg is wondering if he should propose to Lyla again, and you, Oliver, went somewhere last week and came out smelling like secret government bureaucracy.” 

“How--”

“Like locked filing cabinets. That’s how it smells. And another thing--”

An alarm went off on her computer, interrupting what she was hoping would be an epic and scalding tirade. Figured. Felicity glared at them and sat down at her desk.

“Oh, great. Speaking of Oliver’s downstairs brain, Frank Bertinelli has been picked up in a raid. You know Helena’s going to show. You better keep her away from me. She is crazier than a sack full of wet ferrets and I don’t need that on my plate right now.”

When Oliver left for the courthouse, Diggle approached her, looking somewhat embarrassed.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell Lyla,” Felicity said, rubbing a fist in her stomach, just above her navel.

“I was going to ask if you were okay.”

“Just my stomach.”

“I’m worried that all of this is harder on you than any of us expected.”

“I didn’t expect anything,” she said, and sighed. “I expected to go to Central City and I expected to come home as the same person. I expected to stay me.”

“You are still you.” John put a hand on her shoulder. “You just have a new skill set.”

“It’s a little more than that.”

“Okay, maybe it is.”

“You should wait a couple months. Before you propose. She’s almost ready to say yes. And make sure you use a different ring. It can’t look anything like the first one.”

“I will keep that in mind." John looked perfectly composed, bless him. "Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

Felicity took the night off for Moira’s big debate. She didn’t know who she was going to vote for and she was so tired she didn’t care anymore. As soon as she could, she was ditching this EA job and becoming a private web developer. She might even be able to go back to IT, where nobody important talked to her and she could do almost anything over Skype chat. It didn’t feel like she was under assault, precisely. But her new life required a level of vigilance that was exhausting. At the end every day, the fatigue made her physically cold.

In her onesie quilted jammies, she considered the sofa. But there was no point in kidding herself. She crawled into her bed, put BSG on her laptop, and promptly passed out to the sound of the title theme. Her dreams were jumbled, full of Victorian bonnets, snakes, and Caprica Six stabbing her repeatedly in the chest with a piece of broken mirror. It hurt enough to wake her up, but even then the stabbing didn’t stop.

Felicity cried out and looked down, still confused with sleep, to see where she’d been hurt. There was no mirror, no blood. But there was her Oliver-ribbon, twisting and pulling at her, the way an anchor line might worry itself to threads in a storm. Something was very, very wrong. She managed to change out of her pajamas and into jeans and an MIT shirt. The ribbon twisted again, and she doubled over at the bathroom door.

“I am coming,” she hissed to her weird psychic thread thing. “Tearing me in half will not make me go faster. Knock it off.” To her immense surprise, the pain did ease up. Felicity heaved a sigh of relief and called John.

“I’m on my way to you,” he said. "Be dressed."

“I am. What’s happened?”

“Thea’s been taken.”  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I told you,” she hissed at Diggle. “I told you she felt all wrong.”
> 
> Oliver had just left, back to QC, to face the woman who had stolen his company.
> 
> “I know.”
> 
> “I told you feeling was my superpower. I told you and you made me feel stupid.”
> 
> “Felicity--”
> 
> “Oh, don’t apologize to me. Lyla’s going to put her foot so far up your ass that you’ll be choking on Italian leather.”

“I know you said you weren’t worried, but Digg and I went to Roy’s apartment. It’s empty. It’s...really empty.” Once again, she wasn’t sure how to verbalize it. Powers should really come with a human-to-super dictionary. The apartment, more of a bolthole, was like the sound that rolling suitcases made on concrete sidewalks.

She was distracted, thinking about the stale feeling of Roy’s place, or she would have felt Slade’s presence in the lair a lot sooner. Or rather, his absence. Like Isabel, there was no there there. It was colder and emptier than an empty space should be. Mirakuru, she was learning from exposure to Roy, was a void. Even the heroin users that she occasionally encountered in the Glades were more tangible. They smelled sticky and sweet to Felicity, but they had a smell.

Slade smelled like nothing, felt like nothing. He was an absence.

 

* * *

 

_ “I told you,” she hissed at Diggle. “I told you she felt all wrong.” _

_ Oliver had just left, back to QC, to face the woman who had stolen his company. _

_ “I know.” _

_ “I told you feeling was my superpower. I told you and you made me feel stupid.” _

_ “Felicity--” _

_ “Oh, don’t apologize to me. Lyla’s going to put her foot so far up your ass that you’ll be choking on Italian leather.” _

_ “Uh,” Sara said. “Does anyone want to clue me in?” _

_ “Maybe another time,” John hedged. _

_ “Now is good,” Felicity said, glaring daggers at him. “Sara, I was in Central City during the particle accelerator clusterfuck and now I’m a psychometric empath with very little control.” _

_ “Oh. Cool.” _

_ “Not really.” The ribbon around her ribs pulsed with hurt and betrayal. But she had warned them, all of them. _

 

* * *

 

As soon as they saw Slade on the stairs, Oliver wrapped her in bergamot and safety and carried them both over the railing. Felicity’s stomach turned over, but he kept her close and wedged her into a safe space while everything went to pot around them. All Felicity could think or feel was that security. At least for the two seconds until he left her there to go do something stupid.

Felicity did not need to be told to stay down. She looked down at her hands and wished they would do something. She balled them tight into fists and then opened them, splaying her fingers as far apart as she could. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

 

* * *

 

_ Her arms were folded tightly around her, trying to hold in Thea’s disappearance and the dissension in the ranks. Roy was so, so angry that he was starting to feel empty and chilly, too. She couldn’t stand it. _

_ “Roy, just calm down!” Her right hand released her left elbow and flew forward into the universal sign for STOP NO MORE. To her astonishment, he stumbled backwards. His eyes were suddenly glazed and he looked...stoned? Her palms tingled. Roy wasn’t done fighting, and it was awful, but Sara forced him out of the lair at arrow-point. _

_ Felicity just sat there, staring at her hands. Her head felt particularly floaty. _

_ “That was a neat trick,” Sara said.  _

_ “I didn’t know I could do that.” It wasn’t a good feeling, knowing you could knock someone back like that.  _

 

* * *

 

But now, under the stairs, she couldn’t make anything happen. She could hear her friends fighting Slade and she could hear them losing. The adrenaline and anger of the fight washed over here in waves. It was like drinking the strongest black coffee. Her hands were steady, but useless.

“Diggle, stay back!” Oliver called out. “You’re wasting your bullets!”

The bergamot was gone.

 

* * *

 

_ Oliver was back now and the rope between them was taut and tight and thick. His anger and desperation turned her stomach. Literally. The acid in her stomach, always high these days, washed back up her esophagus and flooded her mouth with saliva. She swallowed painfully. _

_ “No. What I can’t do, Sara, is nothing! What would you do if it were Laurel, or your father, or your mother? I will not get dragged into the same debate debate over and over again!” _

_ “So go!” Felicity said, rising to her feet. She stepped forward and put one hand on her sternum and the other on Oliver’s arm. She took the battery acid feeling inside her and tried to tighten it up and turn it into resolve and push it into him.  “Go get Thea. Stop Slade. Do whatever it takes. End this once and for all.” _

 

* * *

 

She could hear it when Oliver went in with his...two stick thingies. They weren’t nunchucks. What were they? It bugged her, helped distract her from the combat nearby which was really not going their way. Her own shoulder stung as Oliver cried out. Felicity didn’t have to look to know where Slate had cut him.

“Don’t forget who taught you how to fight, kid!”

The words echoed, like a gunshot maybe, or a cannon. They shook through her like...a subwoofer at a music festival. They rumbled on a molecular level. She felt the hate and the history there. And then it was gone. Slate was gone. No one moved in the darkness. She should go for the lights.

She went for Oliver. She didn’t need lights for that--she just followed the thread, like a measuring tape retracting back into its casing. She touched him with her fingertips, on his upper arm, over his t-shirt. There was a warm tingle there. He was okay, but apparently out cold. Cautiously, she followed his arm to his shoulder to his chest, placing her palm there. The heartbeat was steady and reassuring. Their weird little ribbon pulsed along in time. Felicity exhaled slowly, then belatedly wondered if anyone else was okay. 

John hit the lights, illuminating a scene of chaos.

“Felicity!” he said, looking at her and her hand. “Are you--”

“I’m okay,” she said quickly, not moving. “Are you?”

“Fine.”

Sara groaned and began to stir, holding her arm. John knelt beside her, holding her still while he checked her eyes for whatever it was that indicated you’d been knocked on the head too hard. That was another thing Felicity should really learn. Beneath her hand, Oliver’s chest rose with a sudden inhale of breath. She pulled back as he sat up abruptly.

“You’re okay,” Felicity said.

“Sara’s not,” John reported. “Her wrist is broken. She needs a hospital and an x-ray.”

“It’s not that bad.” She cradled it gently, but it was a practiced gesture.

“Oliver should go, too,” Felicity added. “His ribs are bruised, at the least. And, also, I’m not going anywhere near a hospital,” she added. “I think I might die.”

“Okay.” John gave her a very blank look. “We’ll drop you off on the way.”

They drove John’s normal car, with Felicity riding shotgun. Her shoulder protested slightly when she reached for her seatbelt. Her whole torso was damp and sticky with perspiration. She was certainly entitled to some fear sweat at this point. Like, buckets of it. When they got to her building, she climbed out and paused, lightheaded with the adrenaline crash.

“You want me to come up?” Diggle was ridiculously perceptive.

“No, thanks. I got it.”

Felicity took the elevator to her floor, feeling suddenly...off. Not unwell, just ill at ease, maybe. She touched her mezuzah lightly and kissed her fingertips, locking her door behind her, plus deadbolts. It was when she went to peel off her leather jacket that she realized she had a problem.

It wasn’t sweat she was feeling. It was blood. For a few frantic moments, she thought maybe she’d been shot? Had John somehow accidentally shot her? She peeled off her shirt and the skin around her shoulder stung and burned simultaneously.

“Ow,” she said. “Ow ow ow ow ow.”

In just her bra, Felicity stepped into her bathroom and turned on the light. There, right where Oliver had been cut, her flesh had separated. Her blood was leaking through.

“Oh no,” she said to the mirror. “Ohhhh no.”

She turned around. Her back was mottled red, an early bruise. From where Oliver had been slammed against the floor of the foundry. And then, a little cartoon light bulb went off somewhere above her head. She wasn’t just tired because she was practicing. She was tired because Oliver. Oliver never slept. Felicity was sleeping for him. Where was Constantine when a girl needed him?

“Oh this is so bad.” Her reflection looked as alarmed as she felt.

There was a little puff of air in the hallway behind her and then someone was  _ there _ and Felicity screamed. In the mirror, over her shoulder, Constantine jumped at the sound, then looked at her, and looked away, covering his eyes.

“Woman!” he objected.

“What the hell!” She slapped her hand to her heart, but it was sticky with blood, making her yelp again.

“Are you hit?”

“No. Yes? I’m bleeding.”

“If I look, are you going to kill me?”

“Why would I try to kill you?” She felt genuinely lightheaded now.

“It’s what most women do when I pop in unannounced and catch them in their brasierres.”

“I’m not going to try to kill you.”

“Okay. Well. Good.” Constantine removed his hands from his eyes. “Sit down,” he ordered. “Before you fall down.”

“I’m not usually the one that gets hurt.” She sat down on the edge of her tub. “And blood doesn’t bother me, I don’t know why I’m…”

“Have you ever been fileted before, duck?”

“No, this is a first.”

“Well it’s bound to discombobulate. Do you have a decent kit at hand?”

“Um--under the sink in the kitchen.”

“Just a mo.” He returned at once, snapping latex gloves on. “No offense. But you don’t know where I’ve been and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Sure.”

“So,” Constantine knelt on the floor before her and began to examine the cut. “Who’s the lucky bastard?”

“What?”

“You know, the fellow that cut you and who’s living on borrowed time? The one they’re going to find in a dumpster with an arrow through the eye?”

“Oh, well.” Felicity prevaricated. “I’m just glad you’re here.”

“Not just because I’m a dab hand at stitches? Don’t worry, I see lidocaine here. You won’t feel it.”

“The thing is.” Felicity stopped and swallowed, the words caught in her throat. “The thing is that I didn’t get cut. Oliver got cut. And I’m the one bleeding.”

“What.” Constantine fell back on his heels.

“There was a fight. Oliver got hurt. I didn’t even touch him. But when I got back here…”

“Ye gods and little fishes.”

“Yeah.” She took a shaky breath, feeling absurdly like crying. “Also there’s like a little string that’s tied to me and it’s sort of tied to him, too, even though I can’t really see his end. I can feel things along it.”

“Hm.” He leaned forward, administering the lidocaine. She barely felt it, just the strange sensation of her skin being tugged to and fro as he worked. He looked uncomfortable, but he was very good at this. “You haven’t read the Bronte yet, have you.” 

“No. I’ve mostly been reading about mirror neurons and the biochemistry of the amygdala.”

“Well, suit yourself. But the Bronte’s probably easier to parse.”

“I went to MIT. I can parse just fine.”

“You don’t like it!” Constantine said in revelation. He looked into her face with a gasp of horror. “You hate it, don’t you. Admit it!”

“It’s so old!” she burst out.

“Fecking Americans,” he said, settling back to work. “You can watch the miniseries with Ruth Wilson.”

“I think there’s also one with--”

“I said,” Constantine stabbed the suture needle in her general direction, “you can watch the one with Ruth Wilson.”

“Okay,” she said. “But what do I do about...the other thing.”

“I haven’t the first bloody clue.”

“What?” She felt a stab of real alarm and looked up at him.

“Hold still. I’m almost done here.”

“You’re supposed to know what I’m supposed to do!”

“Oh?” he asked, distracted by the knot he was tying. “Is that why you summoned me?”

“I didn’t summon you!” 

“There I was, returning a sacred drum to a Sami shaman, when suddenly I think to myself--I should check on Felicity Meghan Smoak. I didn’t even know your middle name until that moment.”

Felicity’s jaw fell open and goosebumps broke out across her entire body.

“Did you speak my name out loud?” he asked, adding salve and preparing a bandage.

“No.” She felt subdued, almost numb. “I just started taking my clothes off and I wished you were here.”

“And who can blame you for that?” Constantine frowned and put his palm against her forehead, a fairly absurd mother-hen gesture. “You should have a lie down.”

“Okay.” She stood shakily, lightly pressing the fingers of her right hand against the wall.

“Right. If I go to the kitchen and make tea, can you make it to bed without keeling over?”

“Yeah. Oh, I don’t have any tea.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling and muttered something to or about the Blessed Virgin that she didn’t quite catch.

“I think there’s some cocoa?”

“Fair play.”

Felicity made it to her room, stripped off her remaining clothes, and pulled on a sleeveless nightgown that she almost never wore. It had a little tiny bow on the neckline that bugged her, but it was the easiest thing to get her arm into. She crawled into bed pulling up her covers and her extra sheets. It was so  _ cold _ all of a sudden. The numbing was wearing off and she could feel the sting and throb in her shoulder. She had some good painkillers left in her bedside table, from the shooting incident, but when she reached for them, her hands were shaking.

“I’ll get that,” Constantine said, appearing with a mug in the doorway. “You’ve had a bit of a rough night.”

“I’m sorry I interrupted your drum thing.”

“Oh, our transaction was mostly complete.” Constantine took the pill bottle from her and handed her the mug of cocoa. “Drink,” he ordered. “The sugar will help with the shock.”

“Of course. The shock.” Felicity sipped at the cocoa, which was really excellent. He must have added a touch of vanilla or something. And now she was not just a person who saw feelings and occasionally got shot. She was a person who got magic sword cuts and shock. She tipped the bottom of the mug up.

“Slow down, luv. There’s a health slug of brandy in there.”

“I was wondering what that was.” Felicity stared at the mug in appraisal, then drank the rest in one swallow.

“Jaysus. You must be a hit at parties.” He plucked the mug out of her hands.

“The last party I went to, I stormed out and blacked out and woke up like this.” She sighed heavily and lay down on her good side, ready to let the fatigue and shock and brandy and codeine hit her all at once. She did not have to wait long.

“Don’t worry,” Constantine said, sliding the covers up and over her shoulders. “I’ll clean up and lock up before I go. Drink plenty of water. Take a day off work.”

She snorted into her pillow. “I’m fired.”

“Oh, well.” Human jobs clearly did not concern him at all.

“Const-een? Thank you. For coming when I called you. Thought you. Whatever.”

“I won’t always be able to,” he said gravely. “But I’m glad I did this time.”

“Me too. Good cocoa.”

“Sweet dreams, Felicity.”

There was a featherlight touch on her hair, like he had just barely patted her head, and a faint waft of brimstone and men’s hair pomade. Then she was asleep.


	7. Cold Hands, Warm Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he didn’t like being a chicken, constantly trying to hide parts of herself so other people wouldn’t see. Oliver had an established playboy persona already in place, ready for cover. Felicity just had her glasses and her inherent social awkwardness, and she really couldn’t separate herself from either. Now she couldn’t even be sure that she’d even separated herself from Oliver’s semi-permanent emotional shitshow either.

They sent all their samples to S.T.A.R. labs. Felicity considered going along with the test tubes and the vials, but… Cisco and Caitlin were very, very bright people. Very intellectually curious people. Nosy people. And Cisco in particular seemed to sense that there was something not quite on the level about her. She was perfectly happy to unload the lot on them and scamper back down under Verdant. To her little cave.

Mood depressed, she crawled back into her floor-bed-nest and curled up around a large pillow in the shape of a graphing calculator. She didn’t like being a chicken, constantly trying to hide parts of herself so other people wouldn’t see. Oliver had an established playboy persona already in place, ready for cover. Felicity just had her glasses and her inherent social awkwardness, and she really couldn’t separate herself from either. Now she couldn’t even be sure that she’d even separated herself from Oliver’s semi-permanent emotional shitshow either.

When it was time, she ran the op from the nest, too, calculator pillow serving as a laptop prop. She could tell Oliver was annoyed to get her call. Over the phone, she heard Thea’s angular chin and tinny contempt. Felicity was just going to have to interrupt, though, because Thea could live to fight another day, but Roy not so much.

What Oliver dragged home wasn’t really Roy at all.

 

* * *

 

Having Roy (not-Roy) laying around her formerly safe space was really starting to fuck with Felicity’s head. It reminded her of those creepy death portraits that the Victorians loved, where you propped up your departed relative for one last snapshot. (Truly, goyim were an adventure.) Roy’s body was there and Felicity could acknowledge that his heart was beating, etc. But Roy was not at home.

“Hey.”

“Shit!” Felicity jumped about a half a foot and came down with her hand over her heart. “Diggle!”

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “I thought you heard me coming down the stairs.”

“I didn’t.” She frowned. “I didn’t feel you either.”

“Feel me?”

“Oh, you know, that smell of gun metal and laundry starch and Lyla’s shampoo. It wasn’t there. I think it--he--Roy’s creating some kind of dead zone. No woo-woo service available.”

“Okay.” John blinked, assimilating and processing this new information.

“I didn’t mean to...exposition all over you.”

“It’s okay, really.” But he was consciously keeping his hand in his pocket, away from her, when he ought to have been patting her gently on the shoulder, Diggle style.

“Right.” Felicity could not quite remember what it felt like, the relaxed way they used to high-five and the complicated handshakes and back slapping.

“I was thinking about getting dinner,” John said. “BBB?”

“Sure.” Felicity hugged her elbows. Restaurants were hard. Supermarkets were hard. The QC cafeteria was near impossible. Everyone had feelings about food, herself included, and they were just...invasive. But she could usually eat, if John went out and brought something back. “A number five with onion rings?”

“You got it. Milkshake?”

She paused, considering her options, which apparently flustered him.

“It’s just you look like you could use a milkshake.” He cleared his throat. “If you want one. But you know, you’re not as...as you used to be. And I thought. A milkshake.”

Felicity raised an eyebrow.

“You just seem a little less...uh…”

“Oh, no, please finish that statement.”

“Jesus, Lyla’s gonna kill me. I’ll just go get dinner.”

“I think that would be for the best.”

With relief, John headed for the exit with speed she didn’t often see off mission. Felicity felt her attention drawn back to Roy, unconscious on their table. He really was...a vacuum like presence. Like a satellite telescope collecting light? No. More like a black hole, gravity that sucked light in.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But right now you kinda make my skin crawl. But we’re going to fix you. Even if we can’t fix me.”  Felicity turned away to check her email for the forty-ish time that day, to see if there was a cure forthcoming from STAR labs.

And when she turned back: Roy. His eyes were flat, predatory. Like shark eyes.

  
“Forgot my phone,” John said from the top of the stairs.

“Stay!” Felicity commanded, throwing a stop-sign-hand in his direction. Diggle stayed, even backed up, although he looked confused about it. Woo-woo powers engaged.

Roy took a step forward, put out a hand to shove her aside, touched her and--

Felicity was on the floor of the lair and also, at the same time, in a plush hotel bed and staring up at the ceiling and also thinking about how cute Sara’s dimples were and how good it would feel to sink all the way inside her again and just stay there. It was so good to be inside Sara, so  _ safe _ . Wait, what? What what what?

“Jesus, Felicity,” John was saying.

“Uh.” She blinked, confused. She wasn’t having sex with Sara anymore, which was...good? Felicity was almost positive she had been. Or Oliver had been. She felt stunned and somehow hungover by whatever had just happened. None of her limbs seemed to be totally connected to her brain. Her mouth tasted absolutely dreadful. And she was fucking freezing.

“Are you okay?” he was straightening her glasses and bundling her into the lair nest. Yes. Good. More blankets.

“Uh?” Her hands weren’t responding, weren’t opening or closing when asked to do so. But she didn’t mind. The black mood she’d been in at the beginning of the night seemed to have dissipated, replaced by a certain floating happiness, of no particular origin. Even the cold didn’t feel that bad, not when she was 

“I’m calling Oliver.”

“Whtvr.” She flapped a hand in his general direction, then closed her eyes.

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Oliver was saying, gently shaking her shoulder, which was safely covered by the comforter. “Felicity. Felicity.”

She pried her eyes open. Still blissed out. Still frozen solid.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Roy left.” Her teeth clattered together and she clamped down on them ruthlessly.

“To you, Felicity. Did he hit you? Knock you out?”

“I didn’t think,” she said through her clenched teeth, but at least her words and mouth were back online. “I put my hand out. Do you know absolute zero?”

“Do I what?”

“It’s zero Kelvin. Nothing colder. But humans can’t create it, we’d need something colder than zero Kelvin to induce zero Kelvin, and there’s nothing colder.”

“Jesus, you’re freezing.”

“He t-touched me. He grabbed my wrist to throw it off. There’s n-nothing inside Roy right now.  _ Absolutely _ nothing.”

“John, what do we do?”

“Something warm and sugary to drink.”

“I’ll f-fucking throw that nasty tea b-back in your face.”

“Can you pilfer something from the bar upstairs?” Oliver asked John, then he stepped back into her line of vision with another blanket. He laid it over her lap and tucked it under her legs. “What else can I do?”

“Stay close,” she said softly. “Don’t touch. But--”

“Close,” he confirmed. He sat down in the bed beside her and reached his arms forward, but stopped. “Is this okay?”

“Yes,” she said. And his arms closed around her and they lay down on the pillow mound. “More,” she said. Oliver scooched closer, his hands meeting somewhere in front of her fleece-swaddled middle. It was enough to send a little heat creeping back into her. “More.”

“Felicity--”

“I said more, Oliver.”

“Okay, more, more. I got it.” He squeezed tighter.

She milked it as long as she could, absorbing every last bit of his source into her sink. And it just felt good. It felt right. It extended that euphoria and it made her feel like a million dollars. Special. She hated herself a little for wanting to be special to him, but G-d did she want to be special to him. Felicity was very careful not to remember that he’d been having a delightful and athletic horizontal romp with Sara just an hour before. Sometimes you had to protect your own sanity.

After they were all suited up and out looking for Roy, Felicity had time to pull the tapes from the lair’s security feed. She watched herself reach out to Roy and then go down like a sack of potatoes. She saw Roy’s exit up the stairs. A few moments later, Diggle ran down the stairs to kneel beside her. And in those few moments, while she was alone on the floor, it looked an awful lot like she was having a seizure. 

Well that was. A thing. That she would definitely deal with at a later date. Like maybe over the summer. The summer would be a great time to deal with that.

Felicity, wearing several blankets as capes, erased the tape and was attempting to gnaw on one of Oliver’s dreadful protein bars when her leg buckled underneath her because apparently this night was just going to be a series of personal disasters that she’d need to erase off of videotape before anyone else saw. Protein abandoned, she lay gasping, reaching for her knee.

_ I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you–especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. _

Nobody else knew yet, except Constantine, that she was experiencing a level of empathetic connection that Charlotte Bronte could only dream of. Diggle definitely suspected. Oliver, bless his heart, was resolutely unaware of problems that he could not personally impale. Laying on her side on the concrete floor, clutching at her knee, she couldn’t help wondering how this had happened to her.

“I’m a nice Jewish girl,” she said aloud, too numb with self-pity to really even cry. “I cleaned up my act. I finished college. I got a job with health benefits and a 401k. I could have been promoted next year. I floss at least once a month.”

Eventually, Felicity got tired of wallowing. She rolled over to her back, sat up with her legs extended in front of her, and butt-scooted back to her tech nest. With a series of maneuvers that definitely invalidated several warranties, she made it to her seat in a rolling desk chair. She tried to be surprised that Oliver had truly fucked up his knee and also tried not to wince every time he did. Really, this was getting ridiculous. On the other hand, the more ridiculous it got, the more likely the secret was to come out. On the other other hand, as soon as they figured out that Oliver getting hurt was literally hurting her, the faster they’d show her the door. And frankly, these people couldn’t be trusted to remember their own PIN numbers, much less how to run a half-decent decryption.

 

* * *

 

She put up a brave face while Oliver drank his terrible island weed tea and Sara sniped at him. They were so busy debating whether or not Roy could be summarily executed or not that nobody noticed she was suspiciously immobile in front of her work station. Felicity promised herself that she would tell them tonight, after the campaign event. Until then, she kept up with busy work, anything she could do while propelling herself with her good leg, because like hell was she standing up.

And that’s why, when Oliver came half-sliding down the stairs, she was in no position to catch him. He stumbled and landed with his butt on the last stair and his legs extended in front of him. The impact made him grunt with pain and Felicity cried out.

“I’m okay,” he said, thinking he was reassuring here.

“You’re so not,” she gasped, reaching for her own knee.

“Where’s the lidocaine?” he asked, using the railing to haul himself more or less upright.

“Oh no.” Felicity narrowed her eyes at him, pushed herself away from her desk, and rolled towards him. “I can tell you what we’re not gonna do, and that’s dumping an entire syringe of painkiller into your leg.”

“Felicity.” The frustration was rolling off him like a heavy rain. “There’s--”

“No,” she said, carefully. “I mean, we don’t have to.”

“What--”

“Help me out here.” Felicity waved her arm at him and he pulled her closer.

“What’s wrong with your--”

“Hold still.”  On an inhale she rubbed her palms together, feeling the friction warm them. “Oliver?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about this. I mean I’m not sorry about  _ this _ , I’m just sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”

“I don’t even know--”

Felicity reached out and gently put her hands on his leg, one just above the knee and one on the joint itself. For a moment, nothing happened. He was looking at her like she’d lost her mind, which, you know, perfectly valid. Then it hit her, like someone had just come at her own knee with a Louisville slugger. Holy fucking  _ shit _ , how had he been walking around like this?

“Holy fucking  _ shit, _ Oliver--how have you been walking around like this.” She sucked in air and fell directly out of her office chair. Her side was definitely going to bruise, but it didn’t seem to make any difference to the wait that her patella was attempting to chew its way out of her body. Felicity looked up at him accusingly. “They gave you a brace--have you even been wearing the brace?”

Oliver looked...horrified. The feeling of pounding rain had passed, replaced by a seasick feeling, bobbing in a raft in the open ocean. 

“I’m fine,” she lied. “This is a new thing.”

“Felicity,” he breathed out.

“How’s your leg?”

“It’s…” He bent it and extended it several times. “It’s fine.”

“Okay, good.” Felicity rolled onto her back and grimaced.

“We have to talk about this.”

“Later.”   


“Felicity.”

“I said later!” she snapped.

“Right.” He turned towards the stairs, looked back at her one more time, expression stricken, then jogged effortlessly towards the club entrance.

Felicity sighed heavily, tears prickling her eyes. She waited for them to pass before she dug her phone out of the pocket of her hoodie and dialed.

“John? No, no, everything’s okay. Well, not really. Um. Help. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”


End file.
